


Summer-- we all have seen

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Historical Dress, Longing, Romance, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 02:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10480350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Once, she'd had a closet-full of such dresses.





	

It was a warm night, summer still in September as it usually was, not as Nurse Mary described it in the North where the leaves would already be changing to fancy dress as she’d said, all crimson and gold, burnished and ruffled, and the remaining heat was why Florence Boyd was not wearing anything but the gauziest of wraps over her rosy evening gown. She was stepping down from a carriage across the street and Emma could clearly see the elegant flounces, the delicate pleating of the bodice, the wide satin sash, the French lace trimming the overskirt and the stripes like clouds at dawn; she barely registered the expression on her old friend’s face, the overly elaborate coiffure that could not disguise the mousiness of Flora’s hair, the diamond earbobs that only showed how dull the girl’s complexion was. Emma let her eyes rest on the exquisite dress, something whole and beautiful and from another world, a world that she had once been the queen of and now could not return to.

“Do you like it so much?” Henry asked. For such a tall, well-built man, he was able to steal beside herself without making a sound, his tread light as his lips had once been upon hers.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, a poor imitation of politeness she knew but all she could muster.

“The dress, that woman you’re looking at—I know women set a great store by things like that,” he said, gesturing a little with a hand that had once touched her cheek the way she would have touched Flora’s silk sleeve. Not as she had touched him, for she had not been careful with him and she could still feel the sweep of his cheekbone beneath her thumb.

“Nurse Mary wouldn’t,” she answered. The Yankee woman, her superior in every way she could imagine, would not have been so preoccupied with frivolity, with memories of pretty words and pretty clothes and everything in the world an equal prettiness except for what Emma looked away from, Belinda’s dark eyes and the housemaids, the poor widow at the back of the church, all manner of sin and despair she’d never bothered her head about.

“I think you might be surprised. She’s not an angel, nor a saint, you know. I once saw her clap her hands over some silk ribbon she had to trim her bonnet with,” Henry replied. Emma imagined she heard what he didn’t say, how Mary had blushed to be given the gift, how Dr. Foster had stepped back when he noticed the chaplain in the doorway. How the color, a deep, expensive blue, dyed with real indigo, had complimented Mary’s fair skin, the ripple of the silk in her hands the most artless flirtation.

“A bit of ribbon. That’s not too much to hope for, not even now,” Emma said, catching herself before she could sigh.

“But the ball gown is?”

“Certainly. And what use could it be?” she added, wishing he would go away and leave her to her daydreams, afraid he would nod and step back, leaving her alone.

“I can think of a purpose. A ball, another ball, and a dance, the one we never shared. That dress would do nicely for that, wouldn’t it, Emma?”

She turned to regard him. His face was in profile and he was still looking out the window but she didn’t think he saw Flora or the dusty street, not even the sunset.

“You’d still want that dance?” she asked. There were so many reasons for him to demur, to back away from her as he had.

“I would. I do. I will, for as long as I have to wait for it,” he said. She wished the hallway was empty, her skirt stripped taffeta, rose or apricot, a quartet playing in the parlor, so she could move toward him and reach for his hand.

“One day, Henry. When the War is over…or before. Perhaps it won’t be that long to wait,” she said. Florence was gone and the sun had set but she saw the light in Henry’s eyes when she looked up at him and knew the warmth she felt was not the September night.

**Author's Note:**

> The inspiration is a pink ballgown seen on Tumblr (you can see it on my Tumblr dash where I am jomiddlemarch) and the idea that a little fluffy Emmry would not go amiss. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


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